Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill

I move, That the Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

As I said in my first reading speech, this is a relatively simple bill. It extends the time frames for audits covered under the two Acts being amended, those being the Crown Entities Act and the Local Government Act, by two months—two months—for the audit time frames in order to deal with what has been covered in the first reading debate: the impact of a shortage of available auditors with the appropriate expertise to be able to complete these audits. This is a simple bill, and therefore I’m going to focus my comments in the second reading on correcting one or two of the matters that I’ve heard raised in the first reading, and also on making the point to the Mr Woodhouse and others that, for such an egregious bill in their eyes, they voted for it last year. So they voted for the same bill last year, but this year, apparently, it’s an egregious bill.

I want to turn to a number of the comments that have been raised. The first of those, and one that’s been a common thread in a number of the Opposition speeches, is that somehow or other the Government is doing something here that it would not be prepared to do for any other agency. A number of members in the House may not have been present for my first reading speech—and I can do a bit more detail for the benefit of the Opposition now—where, on 15 June, the Financial Markets Authority granted relief for private businesses, for the audits that they have in place. They also, along with the Inland Revenue, have been providing regular relief from various regulatory provisions that affect businesses throughout the last year and a half. The Government is here doing as the Auditor-General has requested: for this extension to be made for the Act for which the Auditor-General is responsible. So we are not doing as members across the House suggest. We are, in fact, merely doing what is within our powers, and the Financial Markets Authority have done what is within their powers to support those private businesses.

The other concern that seems to have been raised is that somehow or other this could have all been solved by simply opening up the border, and, by the way, that was a reasonably extraordinary contribution from the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who appeared to be advocating for a mass opening of the border, because that’s the only way we could interpret that. What Mr Brownlee seems to have not picked up is that 17,000 critical workers have come through the managed isolation and quarantine system and are now working in New Zealand. We continue each day to see critical workers across many industries come into New Zealand. This issue would not be solved by that, Mr Brownlee. This issue is immediate. It needs to be dealt with now, and I want to thank all of the other parties in Parliament for the vote that was just cast on the first reading of this bill, because what that shows is that there is a level of understanding among members across the House—with the exception of one party—that this is a situation that, while not at all desirable, is easily solvable, and it does not change anything other than the fact that there is a two-month extension to complete all of the audits that are required by the Auditor-General to complete, as was done last year.

The other issue that has been raised is this question—and I do want to allude to it—of high staff turnover in the Office of the Auditor-General, or in the Audit Office. That is true, and the Auditor-General has acknowledged that in correspondence with myself and, indeed, I believe, with Mr Bayly—and I will return to the Auditor-General’s correspondence with Mr Bayly at a later point in this debate. But in that correspondence, it’s clear that there has been high staff turnover in the Audit Office. I would encourage the members of the Officers of Parliament Committee, the appropriate place for a discussion about the Audit Office and the Auditor-General, to take that matter up, if that is of concern to the Opposition. But the Auditor-General himself has been very open with myself and Mr Bayly about the fact that this is one of the contributory issues.

But the overall point is that there is a shortage of auditors across Australasia. The way in which the Audit Office manages the season of audits is to use private sector auditors to join the office. So even if the staff turnover issue in the Audit Office was not an issue today, the overall number of auditors available in Australasia is now the problem, and what we know from Australia is that they have about 1,000 vacancies and, from a survey conducted by the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, about 200 vacancies here in New Zealand. So the ability of the Audit Office to do what it would normally do and seek people from those private sector firms is also diminished as a result of the global shortage of auditors.

So this is a problem. We need to address the problem. Most of the parties in Parliament understand that this is a practical and pragmatic solution that the Auditor-General, an Officer of Parliament, has come to this Parliament to ask for. It is as simple as that. That is why we have a bill in front of us tonight. It should be able to pass through the House very quickly, if people take that kind of mature approach.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Madam Speaker, thank you. Well, I think some of the points that Mr Robertson’s just been talking about need to be discussed, and I think the first thing is that to say that 17,000 skilled workers have been allowed through the border, and I presume that’s over the last 14 months that he was quoting that figure from. Given there are about 2.5 million people employed in New Zealand, that represents 0.68 percent, or less than 1 percent, of all the people working in New Zealand.

I think if Mr Robertson was to properly engage, as I know he has been, in going around the country, and actually talk to the manufacturing people in places like Canterbury, talk to farmers, or to some people like the horticulture industry, even in my electorate in Pukekohe, or to a whole raft of other industries—and Mr Brownlee talked about some that he’s aware of—everyone is crying out for skilled workers. That doesn’t mean that we’re looking to replace whole stacks of people involved in various businesses or industries. What we’re asking for is a specific, targeted approach. Where there are operators of machinery, that may be one person who has a crucial skill who should be allowed into New Zealand, but right now cannot get into New Zealand because we’ve got a Government that has locked down the borders.

Worse than that, they’ve not only locked down that but they’re not even using all the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities. There are reportedly 2,000 MIQ rooms that are not being utilised, and that is the issue. Why should the industry be forced to go through the trials and tribulations and absolute stress of not being able to operate their businesses?

Actually, a lot of them are telling me now they’re having to turn away customer contracts. They’ve been offered the work, but they simply cannot do it, because they do not have access to certain skilled staff. That is the crucial point that we’re talking about which a number of my colleagues have raised tonight. We’re not talking about a wholesale opening of the border—that’s far from what we’re suggesting. What we’re talking about is using all the MIQ systems and rooms to bring people in. Make sure that they go through the proper quarantine, make sure they’re COVID-tested, but make sure we’re prioritising the skilled workers that come into New Zealand, and utilise the 2,000 rooms that are sitting vacant. That’s the issue that we’re talking about tonight, and talking about 17,000 coming through the border is just a ridiculous proposition when not only are we waiting for skilled people but also we’ve got many New Zealanders wanting to be reunited with their families.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’d invite the member to come back to the bill.

Yep. So that is a really, really crucial point—that we do need the skilled workers.

In terms of auditors in New Zealand, as the Minister himself quoted twice now, there is a shortfall of 200 auditors in New Zealand. Two hundred is not a lot of people—200 accountants—because, effectively, auditors are junior accountants, rising up to very senior accountants. But for many, many auditors, it’s the first job they get when they get their accounting qualification, or as part of getting their accounting qualification. We should be focused on the top end of those and allowing those types of people to come in. I imagine that out of the 200, there will be a varying level of expertise. The important people to use and to allow into the country would be the most skilled, and that is where the Government should have been putting its priority.

At the moment, we’ve got a Government that’s blind to that and that’s said to every industry in New Zealand—all 325,000 businesses—“Hard luck. You just get on. Don’t worry about getting that contract. Don’t worry about that stress. You just pay workers more, if you can get them locally.”, which is obviously the big issue. But when it comes to a Government entity, it thinks it can just automatically pass a piece of legislation to give a special dispensation to one entity.

As I’ve said in my opening speech, we think the Audit Office does a wonderful job. It does a wonderful job and is very diligent in performing its duties. But simply for the Government to say, “Look, we are going to pass a special piece of legislation because our immigration strategy or policies haven’t worked.”, it is just an outlandish proposition. That’s the first thing.

The second thing we haven’t heard is the issue about why these auditors are actually leaving. That is about the terms of work conditions that these people work under at Audit New Zealand, and an element of that will be pay. If there’s a short-term issue, I think the Government could have been much more proactive in terms of dealing with some of those issues that are leading to people leaving the Audit Office and going and joining the private sector or, perhaps, emigrating. That is the issue I think that we haven’t also heard from the Government on. Why aren’t they addressing that issue? Even if you pass this piece of legislation over the next 24 hours, there will be no doubt, if there’s no other changes made—it is almost inevitable—that we’re going to see the Audit Office requiring a similar dispensation for next year, and possibly the year after, depending on where we go with COVID and depending on the level and type of immigration policy the Government wants to have in place at that point in time. So I think there’s no creative thinking about the way that the Government’s approached this.

The third element, if you really wanted to be creative, would be a question of prioritising some of the work that Audit New Zealand should be focused on. My colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse was talking about this in his first reading speech, talking about the wide range of work that Audit New Zealand is proposing to undertake in this financial year. One of the options—the third option—is to say to Audit New Zealand, “Maybe you should put on hold some of that work so you can focus on doing the audits.” Again, a responsible Government or a creative Government would have looked at those options. What we haven’t heard, and haven’t heard from any of the speeches given tonight, nor even from the Minister, is any of those things being canvassed. All we see is a blunt tool from the Government which is saying, “We are going to pass a special piece of legislation to deal with this issue and this deficiency in the way that the immigration policies have been applied by the Government.”, and I think that’s the crux of the matter.

That’s the crux of the matter, and that’s why National has a fundamental issue with this urgent bill that we’re looking at tonight and tomorrow. We need the Government to be more receptive. Every business person watching and listening to this debate tonight will say, “If they’re doing it for one industry, why aren’t they doing it for mine?”, and that is the stress that we’re putting on these people.

We’ve heard all about the training that the Minister for Social Development and Employment talked about earlier today—doing the mahi, as she likes to talk about—about training up New Zealanders. Well, where’s been the issue around helping train some of the early-stage auditors? What is the plan about that? We’ve heard nothing about training about that, or even the concept of trying to get these people working in organisations like Audit New Zealand.

We need to see people actually focus on trying to achieve a proper, enduring solution. That’s not what we’ve heard from the Government tonight at all, and I think it’s very disappointing that the Government just resorts to a quick fix without actually dealing with the substantive issue that we’re all facing. I’d just implore the Government members talking tonight to just bear in mind the electorates that they represent or the areas that they represent as a list MP, and just think through all the different companies and business activities that you know are going on in your area and just ask yourself—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member must not bring the Speaker into the debate.

Sorry. I would ask each member to think: if we passed this bill tonight, is that fair on those businesses in the area where you represent? If you go back through the period of recess over the next three weeks and ask businesses whether this piece of legislation that’s being passed tonight is fair on them, I think you will get an answer that is very firmly saying to you, “No, that is not fair. You need to give us a fair shot and help us so that we can carry on and be successful as business people and continue to employ people and, hopefully, in time, employ even more people.”, which is really what we want to see in New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was a nice lecture from Mr Bayly on immigration policy, but nothing about this bill. I imagine that’s what we’ll be up for all night tonight.

This bill is a simple bill. It gives the Auditor-General two more months to complete important work so that it can do all of its job properly, fully, and for the people of New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

I love second reading debates, except not from Labour members, because you never get anything out of them. But it does give us an opportunity to continue the contest of ideas, such that there were any from the Government backbenches.

But before I do, I want to just talk about a little thing that really, really grinds my gears and it comes from the Labour backbench all the time, and that’s the so-called straw man argument. Now, for those listening who don’t know what a straw man argument is, it’s a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted but, instead, replaced with a false one.

I think Dr Duncan Webb has many talents, but his ability to articulate and argue a straw man argument, as evidenced by that first reading speech—there was nothing in his second reading speech, so there were no straw man arguments or any arguments, in that one—is actually unsurpassed. He and, I think, Greg O’Connor are probably neck and neck amongst the two Labour members who are able to deliver the fallacy of the straw man argument, and then argue and berate and belittle the people that didn’t actually make the argument.

I quote him from his first reading speech. He was surprised to hear me “pooh-pooh[ing] … some of the other work that the Auditor-General’s doing”, saying that the Auditor-General should “shove to one side the work on delivery of health” and “shove to one side the work on domestic violence … Māori equity,” and so on.” That’s not what I said at all.

What I said was that this House is owed an explanation about what the veracity and the intentions of the Auditor-General’s annual plan for 2021-22 is in respect of those things, important though they are. First principles: core business for the Auditor-General is to audit the statements of account for Crown entities. No one’s saying that work shouldn’t be done. I certainly did not say that work should be shoved to one side, Dr Webb. It is important work, but the Auditor-General has told the Minister and this House that their office has a problem, and the solution is to pass a law to extend the report-back period. I think that in considering that bill, we need to know what the plan is, and for Dr Webb to throw up the straw man argument that I said that those things weren’t important or that they should be shoved to one side is patently not correct.

Then we got to Helen White. In fact, it was a good thing I was listening carefully, because she talked and quoted me as saying that I’d said it was about the quality of the audits, as if that was a slight on the Auditor-General. I said no such thing and I corrected her in her speech in the debate. I talked about the confidence in the audits—another straw man argument that is to be defeated.

Then we heard from the Minister—actually, in his second reading speech—accusing my colleague and friend the Hon Gerry Brownlee of throwing open the doors—a wholesale opening of the border. No such thing was said by Mr Brownlee. It certainly isn’t being suggested by any member of the National Party. But the irony of the Government solving its own problems but leaving companies to the wolves of the problems that they have in getting staff—300 teachers? “No worries, we’ll open the border.” Need some horticulture workers, some hospitality workers, some skilled migrants? “Forget it—forget it.”

💬 Angela Roberts: 17,000.

17,000. Does the member know what it used to be?

💬 Anna Lorck: We’re in COVID—we’re in COVID.

The member will—we’ll come to Anna Lorck in a minute, with that dreamy, singsongy first reading speech that we all heard. Seventeen thousand is a drop in the bucket of what this economy generally relies on. Pre-COVID, at any one time, there were around a quarter of a million temporary migrant workers in this country, whether they were on international student visas, working holiday visas, essential skills visas, or pathways to residence under the skilled migrant category. So to talk about 17,000 as if this is a great big thing actually shows how little these people understand about immigration and migration policy in this country.

So let’s come to Anna Lorck, in her singsongy voice—dreamy—“Two months, just two months. Two months, just two months.” I think the whole speech used those two words about eight times. So I ask the member and the House: what would happen if I got into trouble with the tax department and just said, “Oh two months. Don’t worry—just two months.”? Or if my driver’s licence or my firearms licence or my motor vehicle registration expired, and I just said, “That’s OK. Two months—just months.” Remember, according to Anna Lorck—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I would invite the member to return a little more closely to the bill.

The bill is about extending the report back for audits by just two months. But I draw to the House’s attention the Government’s inconsistency in the approach to people in need.

Now, we talked a little bit about the reasons why the Auditor -General’s office is in this state, and the 200 auditors short across the country, so my question is: what’s the plan? Is this a palliative measure? Yes.

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Extend it for two months. This bill is the—

Oh, exactly—thank you. The Hon Stuart Nash has just admitted this is the plan. The only plan the Government has got is to delay. Never mind—and the Minister did remind us that we were here last year, albeit I have to point out that the extension was for just six weeks and it was for just one year. So we’re going for a longer extension for a longer period of time, and last year we had COVID. It had nothing to do with the staffing issues in the Audit Office, so we’re applying the same solution to a different problem. But Mr Nash has just told us that the Government has no plan to fix the problem. It’s just pass a law and hope—pass a law and hope.

So what do we know about the Government’s attempts to train more auditors? Where is the graduate recruitment programme? Where are the salary expectations going to go, because they didn’t give the Auditor-General any more money to meet the market, which is the thing that the Government has told every other company they need to do. “Oh, can’t find staff? Pay more.”—right. When it comes to the Government: “Can’t find auditors? Oh, we’ll just delay things for a bit.” What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.

So where’s the retention strategy? How long are they going to take to fix this problem? [Interruption] Oh, they’re up like meerkats now—good. We might have a decent debate in the committee of the whole House.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Hopefully, they’re going to speak for 10 minutes each.

Yeah, well, that’s right. It couldn’t be any worse than the speeches we’ve heard so far.

No plan, and, as I said in my first reading speech, the bill overkills the problem. The Auditor-General wrote to the Minister of Finance and Mr Bayly setting out exactly how they intended to go about fixing the problem, but that’s not what the bill does. The bill throws a much wider blanket over the problem. It just says for all Crown entities and all local government organisations and council-controlled organisations, a two-month extension. It’s not. There’s more than—

💬 Anna Lorck: Two months.

“Two months.”—there she goes. She’s back—“Two months, just two months.”

So I’m going to indicate to the House that in the committee of the whole House, I and my colleagues will be tabling amendments to the bill to do what the Government hasn’t done, and that is introduce a bill that is aligned with their policy intent. One would think that that was “Politics and Policy 101”, but no, no—lazy Government, lazy bill. So we’ll do their job for them.

If they want a two-month extension for certain organisations, name the organisations—name the organisations. We’ll be tabling amendments that list the large DHBs that the Auditor-General wants to do first, that list the large Crown entities that he thinks are more important than some of the others, and that list the city councils that are larger. I think there’s a question—and we’ll debate this, I think, in the committee of the whole House—about the degree to which size and risk are actually closely correlated. That’s not always the case; in fact, we’re going to give an exemption to the Human Rights Commission, because I think they certainly need to have the bonnet lifted on their spending to make sure that it’s appropriate. So they won’t get a two-month extension according to the tabled amendments that we’re going to put.

There is so much more to talk about in this bill and in this debate, and I look forward to it. As Ms Lorck said, “I can go all night.”

I rise in the second reading of this bill to support it. This is a really simple bill, and if we stick to actually what it’s about, it won’t take long. This is a two-month extension. It is an extension to audits that are due on 30 June, and it is going to allow the Auditor-General to act like a grown-up.

It is very interesting to hear the National Party suggest that we should micro-manage such an important and independent role. I do not agree. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting the bill. We did not support the urgency motion, but we do think the bill is perfectly reasonable and that there are extenuating circumstances. COVID has changed everything for everyone and it has resulted in quite an additional workload to the Auditor-General for issues that are not statutory requirements but are very much in the public interest. Many of the audits they’ve undertaken related to COVID have meant that they’ve had less capacity. Of course there’s issues affecting the workforce. That’s made clear in the disclosure statement, and that’s something that is affecting many institutions and organisations across New Zealand at the moment, again, related to COVID. So a two-month extension is reasonable, it’s simple, and it’s going to mean that the proper scrutiny can be applied to annual reports. We do want that proper scrutiny.

Of course, I did make the point in my first reading speech that in the medium to long term to deal with these issues, we have to improve the capacity of the Auditor-General and the capacity of the Public Service to deliver these types of public goods. For that we require revenue, for that we require a fair tax system, and for that we might need the wealthiest New Zealanders to make a much bigger contribution and a much fairer contribution to this country and the public institutions that serve all of us.

Of course, the lowest-income people and those on medium incomes probably pay too much tax, but that’s only because we don’t tax capital, we don’t tax wealth, and so the real bludgers are the people who own heaps of properties who will pay nothing on their windfall gains over the last year, where we’ve had an over 100 percent increase—

💬 Maureen Pugh: They’re called hard workers, not bludgers.

Oh yeah, it’s hard work sitting on some property—I’ll just respond to Maureen Pugh there. I know, as a property owner, it’s not hard work. I bought a house at the right time in the right place and it’s increased in value due to nothing I’ve done, and I would happily pay tax on the increase in that value, as would most hard-working New Zealanders who care about this country and want to invest in the shared public good for this country—not like those selfish people to my right.

I’d just like to commend this bill to the House, because I think what Mr Woodhouse said tonight—he said that we should be paying auditors more, and yet back in April, all parties supported an address that adjusted the Offices of Parliament for the financial year just ended, and no mention by National at the time for any further funds for staffing. Outrageous argument. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to talk on the second reading of the Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill. Gosh, it’s tiresome listening to the other side of the House talk about this being a minor change—“Don’t worry; it’s just a simple thing that we need to push through.” What that demonstrates is a complete lack of understanding of what we are talking about here this evening and the fact that, actually, this is a very serious matter.

I refer to the department disclosure statement part one, where it refers to the key issue, and I quote: “to mitigate the impacts of a severe shortage of auditors on obtaining robust audit opinions on end-of-year reporting.” I could change the word “auditor” to pretty much any other role in this country and that would still have the same impact. The reality is these auditors are symptomatic of a much broader problem around workforce and a problem that this Government is failing to take action to deliver the results required. Why, I guess, is an important issue. Why do we have a significant shortage of auditors? Well, I’ll tell you why: the workforce vacancies for—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member won’t tell me why. The member will keep the Speaker out of the debate.

The workforce vacancies for auditors in New Zealand is a result of stopping of immigration for normal secondees from overseas. In terms of the audit workforce within this country, a huge element of that is new secondees coming from overseas to fill the junior roles. Those taps for that workforce pipeline have basically been turned off.

What’s happening when the auditors reach two to three years of experience is they are then transitioning rapidly into industry and other jobs. Basically, if you imagine the audit workforce as a sieve, the sieve is leaking workforce with no flow of new workforce coming in the top. And guess who has their hands firmly on the tap of workforce: this Government. So this Government, right here this evening, could make a change to immigration numbers to increase audit secondees into New Zealand to be on the ground within weeks. They could take that action right here, right now. But what have this Government done this evening? They have announced 50,000 offshore visa applications have been cancelled. So they have taken action this evening, while we’ve been sitting in this House, to make the severe workforce shortage for auditors and other roles worse, and that is absolutely disgraceful. Looking at the bill, this basically gives us a flavour—the consequence, I think—of a failure to plan and to act.

The bill refers to an extension of eight weeks. Well, if you look at local government—which I think is a key area which benefits from the value that is added by auditors to identify areas of risk, of issue, of fiscal risk particularly—the absence of audit, particularly around where they don’t have the capability within their own teams to do that, is going to be extended. So does anyone understand what the implication is of delaying an audit on a business that has significant fiscal problems? Well, you delay highlighting that issue. You delay the ability or the escalation of that issue being raised to management, to governance, and to Government. And what is the result of that? Potentially fiscal losses increase and significantly grow, and that is because action could have been taken earlier to mitigate that fiscal risk. So that is quite clearly a simple consequence of the shortage of workforce but, more particularly, the significant implication of this extension by eight weeks.

What is worse is that the audit workforce, as I understand, are leaving the sector not just for money but also for work-life balance issues. The workload is significant for those few people that are working within the audit sector. The public sector, Audit New Zealand, get paid less than the private sector, and that is very similar in terms of the workforce challenges.

This is a great example of the free market working in perfect synchronicity.

💬 Ian McKelvie: Great example of it failing.

Or failing, as you may ask. But the Government that can provide a fiscal strategy for 10 years, can’t work out how many auditors they’re going to need for the next two months. So if you do some auditing calculations, it’s about 300 hours per auditor, so I’m sure that that’s a function of several things. One is—and it exposes a couple of elements that the ACT Party believes: the need for less regulation but more quality auditing around various projects, light rail, Ihumātao, looking at State-owned enterprises. So I’m sure there’s a massive job going on at KiwiRail, as an example, where largesse has abounded, there’s been infrastructure investment that has probably been building a business case that hasn’t been sustainable.

So we do support this extension, but what we would say is that it’s exposing a planning issue that the Minister of Finance should actually be totally on top of, and I don’t understand why his team hasn’t foreseen this circumstance. If you look at some of the key principles of auditing, the numbers are either bigger or smaller, they’re either wider or shorter, and the risks are either defined or not defined. So there are a perception of the shortage of auditors. In Australia at the moment, they’re actually giving them pay incentives, facials—believe it or not—and massages to get them to go to work. But maybe on this side of the House we should roll our sleeves up and spend recess out doing some auditing just to help out. That would be a good thing.

So in terms of the legislation, I also find it difficult to find out how linear the two months is because you would argue that with statement of intents or with full audits you have to work with your clients, you have to work with your organisation, so will we be back here in another month’s time for another extension?

Then that takes me on to the last point: in 2019 when pre-COVID was going strong, there was a full auditing compliment in the House at that time and in the committees, so what happened this time around and why are people leaving the industry? It’s a small amount of people that are actually needed to do this task. You would think—it sounds to me like the Government has resourced this in a way that they haven’t anticipated the workflow, the quality of auditing, which we’re not arguing with because we support the task that has to be done, but it’s just really management of time and motion.

So in terms of the ACT Party’s view on the bill, we will support it. But we would also like to consider some serious thought goes into resource and planning because this is just unacceptable. Two months, as I said, is only 300 hours per auditor for a matter of eight weeks. So why did somebody not see this coming? So thank you very much for the talk to the bill.

Sarah Pallett. Five-minute call.

Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. I’ve been sitting in the House this evening listening to a great deal of unedifying waffle and learning that the Opposition is able to speak at length about bills; it’s a shame that they didn’t do so about the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, which is of extreme relevance to not only the entire country, but to the people that they purport to represent. But in doing so, I shall just commend this bill to the House, and thank you.

COVID—COVID, public interest, two months. I rest my case. I commend this bill to the House.

I need to start by responding to some of the allegations made in the second reading speech by the Minister of Finance, the mover of this bill. He suggested that somehow I and my colleagues were suggesting that we wanted the border to be opened and people to come flooding in. Now, that was, of course, the sort of gross exaggeration of what was actually said—so gross, in fact, as to be a complete misrepresentation—but somewhat typical of what is often said when people know that they’ve got a bill that’s actually not exactly kosher.

One of the things that’s really important in this country is that all agencies follow the law—all Government agencies follow the law. The Auditor-General is an Officer of this Parliament. The Auditor-General would not tolerate, in any circumstance, entities that they are required to audit simply saying, “We haven’t got our audit material prepared. Would you give us a bit of an extension?” Yet the Auditor-General himself has gone to the Minister and pleaded, for whatever reason, that he’s now so depleted of staff that he can’t get these audits done in the time required; therefore, could the Parliament please change the law? That is an extraordinary request regardless of the circumstances that might be outlined somewhat, I think, over strenuously by members of the Government. Yes, last year we did support an extension. It was clear that we had gone through a month of total lockdown and subsequent restrictions on people’s movements, and it was a reasonable thing to do. But, if we are now to be getting into a position where this could be our normal for quite some time to come, I think we have to be acting still within the law, where possible.

The exemplifier of that type of course of action should be the Office of the Auditor-General. The Office of the Auditor-General would not tolerate any of the local authorities coming to this House with a local bill asking that they be exempt from audit processes for a given period of time. There’d be outrage over that. So I think for the Government members to say that this is a simple bill, that it should just be gently ticked through the Parliament without any scrutiny of any great depth, is, I think, a misunderstanding of what the purpose of the Parliament is in the first place. And it is also, I think, very disrespectful of the Office of the Auditor-General, because, while the Office of the Auditor-General will be held by individuals who might have a different interpretation of how they should operate at any given time, the office itself should be one that is required to act with the greatest of integrity and within the law at all times.

So we, on this side of the House, have made the point that other people who do need staff are not able to get them, and while we’re saying, “OK, we don’t think that the gates should be flung wide open”, we’re saying that the Government is being very hard on those businesses in comparison to the way it’s prepared to listen to an Officer of Parliament, effectively, asking the law to be changed to excuse them from their obligations. That’s an extraordinary thing, and I would suggest that, while there will be, obviously, more votes cast than just the 65 of the Government, it’s the sort of bill that a Government with a massive majority just decides it can do, particularly under urgency, where there is absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever.

It’s interesting to look at the departmental disclosure statement on this bill, and throughout it there are a number of questions under a number of topics, and for each one of these, ordinarily when a person goes through these, a member goes through these, they’re able to get some sense of the level of scrutiny that’s gone on. But through here we have just a series of the answer “No, haven’t done it” or “Not applicable”, and it is one of those sorts of incredibly lightweight documents that leads people who have been around for a while to get quite concerned about what the actual intention of the bill is. So, while we’re seeing that it does apparently just extend the period under which an audit might be conducted, it does not exclude some of the major departments of State from that exemption. It may have been a more acceptable bill if there were some of the smaller organisations, particularly Government entities, not local government, not health boards, but other entities that were to have their audit period extended, but to do it carte blanche, across all of the agencies of the State, seems to me to be an excess.

What’s not being discussed here is how this situation has apparently suddenly appeared. It cannot be that just earlier this week the Auditor-General turned up in the Minister of Finance’s office and said—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Not this week.

Last week. He’s now said it was last week. So the Minister may have had a few days to think about it, but was it just the case that the Minister opened the door, in walked the Auditor-General throwing his hands in the air, saying, “I’ve lost 27 staff members. I cannot complete my statutory functions in the time span that I am statutorily required to. Therefore, Minister, there will be a requirement for a bill in the House in the name of the Minister of Finance to extend my statutory deadlines.”?

Well, here’s a question, and we’ll discuss this further, I’m sure, in the committee stage. The Minister technically responsible for an Officer of Parliament is the Speaker. So what advocacy did the Speaker undertake during the time of the Estimates, not for this year but for the last year, when it should have been abundantly clear that there were going to be staffing issues, to try and deal with the reasons why so many of their staff were being poached to other entities? Why was it that there wasn’t some long-term contractual arrangements with some of the private auditing houses around the country to have them doing their continuous work in a way that gets it done?

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: They don’t have auditors, either, Gerry.

Well, those are the sorts of questions that need to be answered, because to just suddenly plunge the House into urgency to absolve an Officer of Parliament of their legal responsibilities seems to me to be the sort of excess that only—only—a majority Government would have a go at. And I think that raises all sorts of concerns on its own.

💬 Anna Lorck: That’s right—Government majority!

Well, Anna Lorck over there, a new MP, says, “Well, that’s why there is a majority for the Government.”—so that they can do things that they want to. Well, that is interesting if it is policy that’s been taken to the people and there’s been choice made on it. That’s one thing, but to come in here and use this Parliament to usurp the rights of the Parliament in relation to an Officer of Parliament is, I think, quite a significant contravention of the standards that we’ve established in this House over a long period of years.

So it’s not possible for the Speaker to participate in a debate, but unfortunately this bill drags the Speaker into it, because, as the acting Minister, or the Minister responsible for Officers of Parliament, it would be appropriate, I think, to know a view from the Speaker about how this situation materialised. At what point in the last 12 months did the Auditor-General come into the Officers of Parliament Committee and say, “I’ve got a staffing problem—such a bad staffing problem that I may not be able to meet my statutory obligations.”? Because, at that point, a select committee, with the guidance of the Minister responsible, might have been able to come up with a solution that didn’t require Parliament to plunge itself into urgency and for the Government to use the club hammer of its absolute majority. So we do see this as a serious bill. We see it, too, as the Government saying one thing for Government agencies and another thing for the private sector.

Major disruptions like COVID require flexibility and pragmatism to overcome. This Government is both flexible and pragmatic. I commend this legislation to the House.